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These are the tarot decks and other tools I use for my readings.

The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck

by Kim Krans

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The Wild Unknown Spirit Animal Deck

by Kim Krans

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ASH’S BOOKSHELF

Browse the books I own, am currently reading, and highly recommend for those on their spiritual path.

Conversations With God

by Neale Donald Walsch

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The Dream Dictionary A-Z

by Theresa Chung

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Glynnis Has your Number

by Glynnis McCants

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@ASHRISING ON INSTAGRAM

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People throw the term “narcissist” around like confetti. 🎊 But being a self-centered ass hat IS NOT synonymous with narcissism.
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Everyone has narcissistic traits. It’s part of being human. When you have achieved a specific percentage of narcissistic traits, you are clinically qualified for a personality disorder.
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Some of the REAL tell-tale signs of narcissism (of a personality disorder level) are as follows:
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↪️ Perpetual victim mentality. They’re never wrong. This person has never once taken responsibility for their own emotions, failings, or actions and everything—I mean EVERYTHING—is always someone else’s fault. The world is against them. It’s not that they are in denial or simply choosing not to be responsible—they legitimately don’t have the capacity to see themselves as the source of their own shit. This leads to point #2...
↪️ Incapable of empathy. They are incapable of seeing the world from any perspective that isn’t theirs. You can’t rationalize with them. It’s like they can’t comprehend what you’re saying and they simply ignore it. They don’t have the capacity to imagine how another person feels.
↪️ Masterfully manipulative. Not because they are evil genius level strategists who gaslight you as a means to an end, but because they ACTUALLY BELIEVE the lies they tell others. They live within a delusional mental landscape of their own creation that constantly shifts to accommodate their need for superiority.
↪️ Delusions of grandeur. I’m not talking about being overly proud of one’s accomplishments, I mean Donald Trump level grandiosity. “I am the best, everything I do is the greatest,” and imagining themselves to be of a god-like status. They are drawn to positions of ultimate power and authority, particularly political and spiritual authority.
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A lot of narcissists exist in fields where they can “help” others because it allows them to be surrounded by people who look up to them, constantly compliment them, and provide a sense of worship which feeds their delusional desire for perfection.
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Comment with a 🤮 of you’re tired of people labeling every asshole they meet with a psychological disorder.
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📷: @poppiphotography

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Another something I wrote one morning in June:

Abandonment is a term we’re all familiar with and have likely experienced to some degree in a relationship at some point–the guy you met on Bumble and dated for three weeks who ghosted you; the one you dated in college who moved away; the friend who broke up with you after a disagreement.

Then there’s traumatic abandonment. I don’t know if that’s an official psychological term, but if it’s not, I’m about to coin it. Traumatic abandonment occurs when someone you have developed a long-term, intimate emotional relationship with suddenly cuts off all communication without warning. It’s being ghosted, but not just by anyone–by someone you love and have a deep attachment to.

Traumatic abandonment leaves a devastation in its wake rivaled only by death–except it’s worse, because at least with death (suicide being the exception), the loved one didn’t choose to leave you.

The stages of grief are similar, though they come with one addition: confusion. First, you are confused. Why aren’t they responding? You make excuses. Maybe they’re just busy. Maybe their battery died. The hours go by and then the days. Maybe they lost their phone. Still nothing. After a few days, it begins to sink in.

Then comes bargaining: once you recognize the person has no intention of responding to you, you keep keep trying. You send text messages trying to fix things. You apologize, or beg for forgiveness, or forgive, or otherwise try to smooth over whatever happened, only to be met with more silence.  Next comes the anger. Why would they do this to you? How could they do this to you? How could anyone, but especially them–this person who said they loved you? How can they just disappear without saying a word?

Weeks begin to pass and the denial begins to work it’s delusion. You tell yourself they’ll come back. You build yourself up with hope. It gets you through the days. Every time your phone buzzes, you think, “Maybe it’s them.” And then you crash each time you see that it isn’t, until it happens enough times that hope becomes cynicism. (continued 👇🏻)

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Emotional IQ 101: When Emotional Validation is Actually Invalidating
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Well intentioned friends and lovers become accidental assholes when dealing with emotions. If you do not want to be an accidental asshole, read on...
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Emotional validation is the process of learning about, understanding and expressing acceptance of another person's emotional experience. This process helps others feel seen, heard, understood, and accepted in your presence. It is a key component of holding space space for others.
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As you can see, by definition, emotional validation requires three steps:
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1. Learning
2. Understanding
3. Accepting
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Learning requires exploration and discovery. It typically involves asking questions about why the person feels the way that they do. It is through the learning process that one reaches understanding.
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Emotional validation is all about *feeling.* We are talking about emotions, after all. The key to communicating understanding and acceptance in a way that *feels* validating is empathy.
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This is where, in my experience, people start to fuck up—unless they’re already a naturally empathic person, they forego the emotional element.
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Saying, "I understand where you're coming from and I validate your experience," does nothing to help a person *feel* seen, heard, or understood, because there's been no actual demonstration of mutual understanding and no emotional exchange.
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Other subtle ways people unintentionally emotionally invalidate others:
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They say: "It's not as bad as you think."
What it implies: "You don't understand your own emotions."
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They say: "Other people have it worse."
What it implies: "You're selfish for feeling this way."
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They say: "I understand why you feel that way, but...[now I'm going to tell you all of the reasons I believe you’re wrong]."
What it implies: "The way you feel is incorrect."
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What they say: “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
What it implies: “No one takes you seriously.”
(Continued in comments)

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My last living grandfather passed away over the weekend.
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It had me reflecting this morning on the three most prominent representations of masculinity in my life - my two grandfathers and my dad.
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Impassivity seems to be the dominant theme between them. The guy in the background zoned out in front of the television, or asleep in the chair. I remember interacting with them a bit when I was very young, but I can honestly only remember a handful of positive engagements between them.
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Mostly it just feels like a chasm. One that grew wider as I grew older. Interaction became more and more surface level. Disconnection.
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The same thing didn't happen with my younger brother. They maintained relationships with him, lauded him, worshipped him, even. I never resented it, but it was impossible not to notice.
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But me...it's almost as if the closer I came to becoming a woman, the more foreign I was to them. Frightening, even.
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I was having a conversation with someone a couple of years ago about a similar topic when he abruptly interjected, "You've never felt protected." (The hazards of interacting with intuitives—we'll blindside you with a sudden insight about yourself that cuts deep.)
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It only took me a split second emotional assessment to discover he was correct. I had never truly felt protected by a man in my life. I'd never even felt truly seen by a man in my life.
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They'd always been there, yet absent. Aloof. Disengaged.
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And so, with no feeling of safety in which to blossom, I developed my own inner-masculine to compensate. I became hard in order to protect myself. They dealt with me through avoidance, and so that's how I learned to deal with them.
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I don't blame them. They didn't know how to be present. They didn't know how to connect. They were products of the toxicity of masculinity that they were raised in.
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It's taken me years to even begin to unlearn that coping mechanism, but as I continue to become more aware of it, it's my hope that it will lead to attracting relationships with men who have more depth, more presence, and the ability to connect more deeply than the ones who raised me—er, you know, who were just kind of there...

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I was going to post this yesterday until Mercury Retrograde killed the Internet...
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I started playing around with some new branding templates the other day. Might be feeling the vibe to get back into designing my own stuff again. *Might be.* Also, it makes it slightly more difficult for people to rip off your shit when your face is on it. And people seem to like my face, even more so than my words, which is unfortunate but, I suppose, reflective of the world we live in.
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More to come. Tell me what you think.
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#love #instadaily #creativewriting #words #honestlyworded #thoughtoftheday #lovequotes #soul #instagood #wordporn #spilledink #wordsofwisdom #sacredunion #writer #poet #poetsofinstagram #poetry #writersofinstagram #quoteoftheday #reflectingoutloud #writingcommunity #writersofig #poetsofig

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I'm realizing that I take serious issue with the commercialization of spirituality.
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Once the desire for success overtakes the desire for service to the greater good, you cross the border into service of your own ego, and the work loses its integrity.
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I think this is one of the reasons I've taken a sabbatical from offering paid services. If I'm in a position where I *need* to make my spiritual work support me financially, then I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to make money, rather than to be of service.
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If I'm inherently driven by a state of lack wherein my primary motivation is to achieve status and success, rather than be of service, the work also loses its integrity.
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This concept applies to business, as well as life—when you lose sight of your mission, you find yourself out of alignment with your higher purpose.
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Spiritual work is sacred work. People are trusting you with their deepest level of vulnerability. You have a responsibility to honor that within your interactions.
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It's important to periodically check in with ourselves and give our motivations a hard, honest assessment.
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You might be sitting there thinking, “Well Ash, nobody ever became a millionaire with that attitude.”
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And you’d be erroneously assuming that I desire to be a millionaire. I don’t. I’ve known a few. They’re rarely happy and are frequently followed by a trail of regrets. The happy ones are the people who followed a passion, the money was just a pleasant side effect.
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You can be successful and still do what you love. The difference is that if you do what you love, you're more likely to be successful. You can't help but attract that to yourself. If you strive primarily for success and lose sight of what you love, you're just like everybody else at the end of the day, wasting your life, sacrificing real happiness while working your ass off for something that never truly fulfills you.
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Have you checked your motivations today?
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#motivation #commercialization #spirituality #bereal #behonestwithyourself #spiritualbusiness #soulpreneur #heartbasedbusiness #growyourlove #fuckthehustle #businesswoman

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ON SELF-RESPECT
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People talk about self-love all day long, but rarely does anyone talk about self-respect. The two are intertwined, and you certainly cannot have one without the other.
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Self-respect encompasses a lot of things. It means upholding your boundaries and maintaining your integrity. It's the staunch refusal to give yourself away to please other people, to maintain relationships, or to keep someone in your life.
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Self-respect means not forcing yourself to do things you're not fully comfortable with as a transactional approach to achieve an end.
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I'm not talking about things that are simply outside of your comfort zone, I'm talking about things that are outside of your moral compass.
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Telling that nagging sense of discomfort to fuck off when it tells you that you can't do something or that you're not capable is healthy. Telling that nagging sense of discomfort to fuck off right before you do something that will ultimately lead to feelings of shame and regret is self-destructive and harmful.
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People with no self-respect can't tell the difference between the two.
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Create a dialogue with yourself around your discomfort. Ask yourself where it's coming from. Is it because the negative voice in your head is telling you that you can't do something? Or is it because your soul is alerting you to the fact that this isn't who you are and you're about to sacrifice a piece of yourself for the sake of whatever or whomever you're trying to hold onto?
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In the end, it's not worth losing yourself.
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📷: @astrofashionista
#selflove #selfrespect #boundaries #shame #personaldevelopment #personaldevelopmentcoach #personaldevelopmentjunkie #selflovequotes #respectyourself

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Ash’s Faves

ALL OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

Ash’s Faves

ALL OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

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PSYCHIC ACCESSORIES

The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck

The Wild Unknown Spirit Animal Deck

ASH’S BOOKSHELF

Conversations With God

The Dream Dictionary A-Z

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